Don’t know birdsong? There’s a (great) app for that

It’s that time of the year when the clocks go forward and British people
emerge from the winter to embrace Spring. What better than a good country
walk and an app to improve that experience, says Monty Munford

Spring is in the air and the time for a new start is reflected by the seasons. This is the time of the year when we make real New Year resolutions, not when we’re mired by the start of grey and cold January.

It’s time to get away from the screens that are dotted around our homes and head out into the real world, see something that has texture and hear something that has meaning and is from nature.

There is nothing like birdsong to lift the heart, but things are changing in our skies. Sparrows and blackbirds are dying out because of hedgerow destruction, tarmacing and pesticides. Even our seeming obsession with cats is bad news for smaller birds; cats are killing them like, how shall I put it, flies.

Taking their place are sky-rats such as crows and seagulls, bullying their way in and drowning out the songs that more benign birds sing. So, the ability to listen to and love birdsong is something we should do while we still can.

As a child, I remember my parents’ excitement at seeing a robin perch on a fence at the end of the garden, it was a piece of magic that I haven’t seen for decades. The red, red robin went bob bob bobbin’... away forever.

Moreover when I lived in India, there was nothing like getting up at dawn, putting my son on the back of a motorbike and searching for kingfishers in the marshes close to where we lived. Even now we still look through The Indian Book Of Birds, a seminal work that has been republished 13 times since its initial 1941 edition.

The Indian Book Of Birds is not particularly useful when living near the Sussex Downs and coming out of hibernation to embrace the Spring with a country walk. There is, however, something extraordinary useful when embarking on such a walk and that is Birdsong ID.

This wildlife app is described by its founders Isoperia as ‘Shazam for birds’, meaning that people can point the app whenever it hears birdsong and it will identify the type of bird. Available both on IoS and Android, the app is also useful because it doesn’t rely on internet connectivity to work, so it works ‘off the grid’.

“Up until now, bird apps were restricted to pictures and written descriptions. The ability to automatically name a bird by its song has always been a bit of a Holy Grail, but our app allows people to do this.

“Although there’s an obvious comparison to Shazam, the challenges are different. We are dealing with bird songs that are competing with other noises in the environment. Birds from the same species have variations in their songs – and the songs they make will change over time,” said Mark Haley, founder of Isoperla.

These challenges appear to have been overcome with Bird Watching Magazine, apparently the UK's best selling magazine for birders, rating the app nine out of ten, which said ‘the app can be remarkably accurate’. The numbers look good too, with more than 50,000 people downloading the app.

It appears incongruous to go for a country walk holding a screen up to the air when the whole point is to get away from screens, but exceptions to rules exist in life, just as they do in nature and the Birdsong ID app is one such departure.

The adage that says playing golf is a good walk spoiled is in this case turned on its head. Birdsong ID is a good walk improved, it may even put a spring in your step as you shrug off the inertia of winter.